The New Celeron

Just about everyone is familiar with the Pentium II Celeron, Intel's "underpowered, budget CPU" that became a huge hit with the upgrade/DIY community. This no-frills processor, marketed to compete in the "low-end" $1200 and under PC market, actually contained faster and more cutting edge components than the flagship Pentium II, making its performance far from low-end.

Above that, the Celerons proved themselves to be the most overclockable processors to date, with a large majority of thrill-seekers claiming success at 375, 400, and 450MHz from their humble 300Mhz chips. For those who wanted the best bang for the buck, there was no beating a $100 Celeron chip which, with a little tweaking, could outperform a $500 Pentium II.

Moving forward with Celeron line, Intel has recently announced new parts running at 366 and 400Mhz. Besides the changes in core frequency, the biggest part of this announcement was the introduction of yet another CPU package, the 370-pin PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) connector, or PGA-370. Similar to a standard Pentium or K6-2/3 setup, the actual processor is housed in a small plastic package, which also contains the necessary pin contacts to the motherboard. Compared to Intel's latest standard practice, the Single Edge Processor Package (SEPP) for Slot 1/2, PGA is much cheaper to manufacture, and better suites the Celeron chips' on-die cache.